THEY TOLD ME IF TRUMP WERE ELECTED, JACKBOOTED FEDS WOULD BE INVESTIGATING THE EDITORIAL POLICIES OF NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS. And they were right! “In one instance, The Enquirer bought but did not publish a story about an alleged extramarital relationship years earlier with the presidential candidate, an unusual decision for a scandal sheet. The federal inquiry could pose serious legal implications for the president and his campaign committee. It also presents thorny questions about A.M.I.’s First Amendment protections, and whether its record in supporting Mr. Trump somehow opens the door to scrutiny usually reserved for political organizations.”

Everyone knows that “editorial decisions” aren’t protected under the First Amendment if they might help Trump. And there’s absolutely no such thing as a Deep State.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire has thoughts.

“Thorny questions”. My goodness, the Times was bailed out in 2009 by Carlos Slim, a wealthy Mexican. Does this raise “thorny questions” about their commitment to undocumented immigrants? Of course not, because they say it doesn’t.

Now obviously, Mr. Slim knew the Times was reliably progressive when he bought them, so he didn’t need them to change their views on anything. But the National Enquirer has been making money off of Clinton scandals for decades. Maybe the AMI people simply decided that, in mirror image to the Times Upper West Side readership, their readers wanted material that bashed Hillary and praised Trump. They do tell the Times it was a business decision driven by the popularity of Trump with their readership. Plausible? Sure. Legal? Say what now?

If all AMI did was pick a side in pursuit of an audience, my goodness. That is well worth investigating because we all know that the mainstream media would never trade sympathetic coverage for access that can boost prestige, circulation and ratings. Please.

As to aggressive coverage of sex scandals by the mainstream media, well, that may be ideologically contingent – back in 2007-08, John Edwards and Rielle Hunter were a tabloid-based open secret (gullible Media Matters link) for months before the “responsible” media decided to jump in. Why they might today rush to bash Trump based on mere allegations is hard to understand. No it’s not. Is the National Enquirer being investigated for spiking a story which the Times would never lower itself to touch? Too thorny!

Ouch. Plus: “Is paying for stories a ‘legitimate press function’? That is how the National Enquirer broke the case of the murderer of Bill Cosby’s son. They also paid Rush Limbaugh’s housekeeper for the scoop that got Rush busted for his oxycontin habit – I bet that looked legit to Common Cause. To paraphrase slightly, the dark night of fascism is always descending on the right yet arriving from the left.”

MICHAEL LEDEEN: The Road to Damascus.

It has long been possible to subvert the failed mullahcracy. Most Iranians detest the regime. Keen-eyed mullahs and ayatollahs know this, and know that they will cease to matter to the majority of Iranians the minute the Islamic Republic falls. They all know, because they have heard the words from Washington, that Trump has no sympathy with the regime. Unlike Obama, he does not want a strategic alliance with Tehran. He prefers Jerusalem and Jedda. As do most Iranians.

So we should be supporting the internal opposition. Perhaps we are, but our leaders and pundits, even now, keep talking as if we must choose between a bigger war and the survival of the regime. I find that unfortunate and deplorable. Why are our leaders not openly calling for democratic revolution in Iran?

Indeed.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? School Rules That Allowed Parkland Shooter To Get Guns Coming Soon To Your District.

SNOWFLAKES: Twitter Bails on the Cartoon Pistol Emoji.

With the release of Twemoji 2.6, Twitter is changing the way a handful of emojis look across the service. Those updates include a sharper-looking knife, a less Sputnik-esque alembic, and yes, a green squirt gun that will replace the cartoonish revolver in tweets. Twitter’s change could be read as a political statement, but the company’s delayed action makes it seem more like it’s just following with the general trend.

It’s a stupid trend.

HEARD MY GENERATOR KICK ON LAST NIGHT AND WONDERED WHY, SINCE THE WEATHER WAS FINE. Apparently, it was because of this unfortunate raccoon.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How ‘White’ Western History Has Become an SNL Skit on Campus.

ED MORRISSEY: Senate GOP Getting Ready For Another Big Rule Change?

It’s not the rule change Donald Trump wants, but it might be more effective. Having allowed Senate Democrats to slow and obstruct confirmation of presidential nominees for more than a year, Senate Republicans came out of a caucus meeting hinting that changes are afoot:

Senate Republicans, frustrated by delaying tactics imposed by Democrats on President Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees, are on the verge of altering the Senate rules in order to speed up the process.

GOP lawmakers told the Washington Examiner Tuesday that momentum is building for a change in the Senate rules that would shorten the time frame allowed for lawmakers to debate each nominee.

One proposal by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., would reinstate a temporary rules change made by Democrats in 2013 that reduced debate time from 30 hours to eight hours for most executive branch nominations and from 30 hours to two hours for lower judicial branch nominations.

Republicans have talked about these rule changes for months. Mitch McConnell was reportedly ready to act last fall, only to back away after Chuck Schumer accused him of coming to the debate with “unclean hands.” That has to qualify as one of the least self-reflective statements ever, of course, and McConnell’s retreat did nothing to incentivize Democrats to end their stalling routines.

If there’s even a chance that the GOP Senate majority goes away in January, they ought to be doing everything they can to speed things up until then.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. “When gun-rights advocates warn that if gun-control groups win, they’ll go after knives next, it sounds like an absurd exaggeration. In Britain, it’s now official government policy.”

NICE: F-35 Ready For Missile Defense By 2025.

So F-35 fans have been talking up the plane’s missile defense potential. Congressman Duncan Hunter boasted last year that the stealth fighter could not only track ICBMs — whose fiery launch is “like an Act of God,” hard to miss — but also shoot them down with its current air-to-air missile. “You can shoot down missiles coming out of North Korea in the boost phase with CAPS (Combat Air Patrols) of F-35s and AMRAAMs, and I’ve got a map to show it,” he declared.

Maybe. The AMRAAM missile isn’t designed to chase an ICBM into space, so it would have a narrow window to kill one before it escaped the atmosphere. Greaves’s wording suggests using the F-35 to shoot ICBMs might require developing “a new fast missile,” which would take years to develop.

Then let’s get on that, pronto.

JOBS: Jobless claims drop 9,000 to 233,000, cling near 45-year low.

SENTENCE FIRST, TRIAL AFTERWARDS: Linda Greenhouse on the recently-deceased Judge Stephen Reinhardt: “Doctrinal purity mattered less to him than extracting even the most gossamer claim to a favorable result.” Greenhouse comes not to bury Reinhardt, but to praise him, but I don’t find the notion that judges should reason backward from the result they want generally praiseworthy. I don’t think Greenhouse would, either, if it had been a conservative doing so.

IRAN IS ON THE BRINK OF HYPERINFLATION: The Iranian rial is in free fall. Still seem like a good idea for President Obama to provide the regime with hard currency that will help it weather a crisis? Did it ever?

BUT OF COURSE: Schools not as excited about pro-life walkouts as about anti-gun walkouts.

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Also, Kindle Daily Deals, and today’s Digital Deals.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The Senate GOP Hates Trump and Much, Much More. “The slow-walking swampers at the DOJ finally turned over the ‘Electronic Communication’ they were legally required to produce to Congress. I go to bed pretty early since I wake up early to polish off the Briefing, but I was fully prepared to stay up until 12:01am to watch Devin Nunes kick in the door to the DOJ with some mighty jackboots to get that document and frogmarch the subversives into the slammer. Alas, it did not come to pass.”

Heh.

THE INDO-PACIFIC QUAD CONFRONTS CHINA

A VIEW OF AFGHANISTAN: Fine photo of a rear gunner on CH-47 Chinook in flight over Afghanistan.

THE PRE-MORTEMS HAVE BEGUN: Our awful Congress.

Read the whole thing.

(Classical Insta-reference in headline.)

EVERY TIME I THINK I’M OUT THEY PULL ME BACK IN: Why cities should just annex the suburbs. “Many cities have begun to experience some urban revival after the nadir of the 1970s. But many are still struggling under a heavy burden of services without the tax base they logically deserve.”

So I guess if city governments are too poorly run to earn loyal residents, they should be able to create them by legal fiat.

BYRON YORK: If Comey talks to sell books, why not to Congress?

Comey’s promised openness is particularly tantalizing for some congressional investigators who have been trying unsuccessfully to get Comey to answer questions in the months since he was fired. The FBI has treated the Comey memos as if they are classified at the super-duper highest levels — they’re not, with some not being classified at all — and forbidden note-taking by the few lawmakers who have been allowed to see them. And as far as Comey sitting down with, say, the Senate Judiciary Committee as it investigates aspects of the Trump-Russia affair? Forget it.

On May 17, 2017, after Comey was fired, the Judiciary Committee asked him to testify about the circumstances of his firing and his dealings with the Trump and Obama administrations in the Trump-Russia and Clinton email investigations. Comey declined. (He agreed to just one session, with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which had different sorts of questions.)

On May 26, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top two Republicans and top two Democrats — Chairman Chuck Grassley, ranking minority Dianne Feinstein, plus Lindsey Graham and Sheldon Whitehouse — wrote Comey again. “Given our role in considering the nomination of the next FBI director, the still unanswered questions from your last oversight hearing, and our role in oversight of the Justice Department and the FBI, your testimony will be essential to our constitutional duties,” they wrote. Specifically, the lawmakers wanted to know as much as they could find out about Comey’s memos.

On June 1, Comey sent a brief response. “I have received the letter,” he wrote the committee. “As a private citizen now, I respectfully decline to answer the questions. Wishing you the best, Jim Comey.”

Comey has not exchanged a word, spoken or written, with the committee since then.

He’s a hack. Or maybe an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks.

INTERN NATION: I have a lot of sympathy for students and recent college grads who complain that they shouldn’t have to work for free as interns to order to land a paying job. When I was fresh out of school that was rare. But I would have more sympathy for them if they understood how the over-regulation of the employment relationship is what leads employers to shy away from hiring an inexperienced employee before he or she has served a “try-out period.” “Intern nation” is the result of the fact that it is very hard to fire an employee who turns out to be an uncooperative jerk without risking a lawsuit. Instead of recognizing the problem, Millennials ask for more regulation.

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Marijuana Stocks Spike After Ex-House Speaker John Boehner Joins Cannabis Company Board.

THE MOVIE 2001 IS NOW 50 YEARS OLD. If it were a reality, we’d have had space stations and moon bases for decades.